Coming to Believe – Workshop – Part 1 of 2 – Bob D.

uh chris uh asked me to do a workshop on something i don't know that i'm not sure if i've ever done a workshop just on this alone on how i've come how i came to believe my struggles in coming to believe and connect i guess eventually with a power greater than myself but and i uh i started thinking about it and i i struggled a lot with this I remember coming into treatment centers that would take me to AA meetings, and I'm desperate, and I feel like I'm dying. And I would listen to people share, andI'd kind of get with them. I'd start to identify with some things. And then the minute they talked about God, it was like, oh, no, oh no. And it was Like this steel door would slam in my head. And then everything else they said from that point on, they were an idiot. You know what I mean? From that, and I couldn't hear anything. And we're going to get into a little bit why some of that's like that. But there's a paragraph in the beginning of We Agnostics that really is the point I had to get to. And I think it's the point that brings us to the table. I don't have to really believe in God so much as I just have to get the reality of my life. And you get the realty of your life if you have alcoholism like I have an alcoholism. You're stuck. You've got to find something. You're struck. And it says on page 44, In the preceding chapters you have learned something of alcoholism And the whole book up to this point, The Doctor's Opinion in the first 44 pages are basically trying to tell you you're screwed. I mean, you're really, yeah, you think you're going to be back on your feet? Nah, you'RE screwed. You'RE screwed We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. And this is a little controversial, but I think from my experience and observations, I think there's a lot of problem drinker people in alcoholic synonyms. People who don't need to do all that. Their problem ends where the bottle ends. That they just are the kind of people that wake up one day and say to themselves, man, I just got a DUI. I'm going to lose my wife and kid. I'm not going to do that ever again. And they just put the plug in the jug and join some church or something, or just whatever, just get busy at work or in their family, and they're fine. They don't suffer from alcoholism. They don'T need the steps. They don' t need a sponsor because their head's pretty clear. Now they can make good decisions sober. Not the kind I make solving problems that haven't occurred yet, But they make just good reality-based, you know, decisions. I mean, they're not overly sensitive. They're not prone to depression and bouts of anxiety almost to the point where they can't get out of bed. I mean they're that like that. They're just fine when they quit drinking. And then there's me and the people at Alcoholics Anonymous was really designed for. People who, when I quit drinking, it feels like I'm doing time. So we hope we've made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. And this is the best description of alcoholism, I think, anywhere in our literature for me. It really hits me. It talks about two things. If these two things are present in your life, well, you're in a lot of trouble. and it has really not anything to do with how much you drank. It doesn't have anything to deal with whether you've been to jail or not. It doesn' t have to do, whether you also did drugs. It doesn''t have anything do with any of that stuff. It has to do these two things. It says first if when you honestly want to you find you cannot quit entirely. What do they mean by entirely? I mean, you know, they don't really mean entirely. I'm like Dr. Bob. I could quit drinking for long periods of time if he kept me properly medicated, but I couldn't quit entirely, right? Or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take. So it says if you've got those, if that's in place, you're probably alcoholic. And if that's the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. I was both of those things. I had something wrong with me from the time I was a little kid, 12 years old, took my first drink. When the effect of alcohol hits me, my reaction to that has always been, I need more of it, I can't get enough of it. And that's the reason that I have little control over the amount I take. Now, I could point, I had a few instances in my life when I was out somewhere to dinner with some people that were on my back about my drinking and I could have two to show them. But I couldn't, I usually had to go get messed up later that night, you know, because it, but I really, it starts something rolling. Once I let that tiger out of the cage, I can't get it back in. It has a life of its own. And then when I've been rendered sober, and you know one of the things I used to talk about when I got sober? Well, I never really got sober on my own power. I never stopped drinking on my old power. I always had to be stopped by running out of money, getting so physically sick I can't drink anymore, getting arrested, shaming myself into recovery. I did that once or twice. You just do something so horrible and hideous on a drunk in a blackout that when you find out about it, you just, oh. You shame yourself. But I have never once in all the years I was partying ever got to a point where I said to myself, I said this to myself I couldn't carry it out, where you think, you know, this is getting out of line here. I better quit because by next week this could really become a problem. And then quit. I could say that to myself, but then I never quit. I have to hit the wall. I have hit the walls. So those two things are always in place for me. Once I start, I don't know what's going to happen to me. I don' t know how far it's going go. It's like having sex with a gorilla. You ain't done until the gorilla is done. I mean, that's just the way it is. That's just, that' s just the way it is. So that's what brings a guy like me to the table. When you really get it that you're in this trap, you can't spring. That for some reason when you start, you can't stop. So you burn your life to the ground. It's an eventuality. And when you've been stopped and you're getting another chance, you can't take advantage of it because you can't quit entirely. You always no matter how much you swear to yourself, if you're like me, as I did many times, I would say, oh my God, this time I mean it. And seven or eight or ten or eleven months later, I'm back at it again. This is, this getting this, the getting the truth about me, seeing through the delusion of, oh, I'm going to turn it around, or I'm going to do this, or this time I'm going to drink like a gentleman. All the crap that I try to tell myself in my head, once I could see all, once I wore all of that thin, then I'm in a bad, bad spot. And I think guys like me have to be in that spot. One of the great influences in Bill Wilson's life was a guy by the name of William James. And William James wrote a book called The Varieties of Religious Experience. And Bill Wilson, after he had his spiritual experience in Towns Hospital, was given a copy of that. And I think that's one of the reasons we're here. William James, if you've ever read the book, it's a hard book to read. I've read it twice in my life. The first time it was like reading Greek or something. And then And I went back not too long ago, several years ago and read it again. I started to get something out of it. And what he did was something that I don't know that had ever been done before. He tried to scientifically observe and figure out what's the commonality in people who have religious or spiritual experiences. And he did it from a very kind of objective point of view. And he discovered that people who have these conversion, born-again spiritual experiences, these experiences that seem to change your life, they all have two things in common. The first thing that they all in common is it never happens to you when you're on a roll. I mean, it just doesn't happen. You just came back from Vegas, hit the mega bucks for $2 million, you married a showgirl and you think, I'm going to find God. I mean, it's never like that. I mean it's always when you're broken and demoralized and you hate yourself and you hate what you've become and you feel hopeless. And then the second thing that he found that those experiences had in common is that they were invariably transitory experiences which means that often the shine would wear off of them and the old personality would reassert itself and you'd be back to being you again. Back to being the guy that doesn't do well. And boy, is that true for me. I had epiphany experiences in therapy and I sort of got saved sort of semi one time and I would always be back to being me again. The shine of that experience could always wear off for me and I suspect that we are here because Bill got that. He got that he got that this experience he had in Towns Hospital was not the end. It was only the beginning. And unless it followed by a lot of spiritual actions and a lot self-sacrifice and helping other people, that he would not be able to keep that experience alive. And that's proved to be the test of time. I know in my home group, I did this one night in a workshop. I asked for a show of hands of people, anybody in here that's ever been saved and then drank again after that. I was surprised how many hands went up. A lot of people's hands went up where you think you got it. And then later on it goes, you revert back to being you again. So how does a guy like me really come to the table? I mean, okay, I've got to get that I'm screwed. I've Got To Get That I'm In A Trap but I can't spring. But that in itself, what has to happen? And on page 25 of the book, it's an amazing description of exactly what had happened to me. And I remember a couple instances that were just key to bringing me to the table. It says there is a solution. Almost none of us like the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which this process requires for its successful consummation. Boy, that's an understatement. I don't know anybody. I've never met anybody that came to AA and went, oh, I get to write an inventory? Oh, this is wonderful. I get the right amount of money? I get a lot of money to make amends? I can't wait. Nobody likes that. We do that stuff because we're under the gun. I mean, we're Under the Gun of Alcoholism. I mean when you think about it, to pay people back, I mean to do all that stuff, oh jeez. But here's what it says. These two things, and this is exactly what had happened to me. It says, but we saw that it really worked in others. And that was my first awakening in Alcoholics Anonymous is that I had an experience that took me to a place where I knew something that I needed to know. and what it was is that I see, I could have went on I could've died in and out of the rooms of alcoholics and I'm just listening to your miracle stories about God forever and never connected because there's something about me you get me sober and put me in a group of sober people you're them you know what I mean? You don't count you're the do-gooders in AA and you're not like me really so I can discount your experiences You know, I used to do that. I'd just sit there listening. But what happened to me is I was in a halfway house and I'm sober a little while and I really have made up my mind that I'm not going to drink and I're not goingto do any hard drugs because I'm dying here. But that's all I do. And I got a running partner in there and him and I, we go to meetings together. We sit in the back of the room and judge the people in AA. I mean, that's just what we do. We just sit there and we cross-talk in the meetings and we're disruptive and we just goof on the people in AA because if you want to really judge AA properly, you kind of need a partner to get the right torque on the personalities. And him and me, we both came from the same streets. We both drank alike. we both felt alike we both had a lot of the same problems this guy is like me and we knew we couldn't drink but my god sobriety is bad can't we do something so we started this marijuana maintenance thing together and we started smoking pot and naturally, I mean it's not a surprise I go back to drinking, of course I goback to drinking because I've let the cage door open the minute I picked up a joint of marijuana for the tiger to get out. Of course I go back to drinking. And I get thrown out of this place and I'm living on the streets and I've crashed in an abandoned building and I am dirty and I am sick and I drink that cheap wine and I got the shakes and I don't know what else to do so I go back to the place I had been thrown out and I stand just off property waiting for the guys to come out on their way to do their laundry or to work so I can beg nickels and dimes from them to get another bottle of Richard's Wild Irish Rose. And one day he comes out, my running partner comes out and he sees me. And he gave me that look. I tell you, it's a bad look. And I bet you most of you have seen that somewhere along the line from somebody who you've been close to, that look that's a combination of pity and contempt. And I'm shaken and I'm bloodshot eyes and I've been bathed and I got hair down to here with twigs in it and stuff. I'm a mess and I am pathetic. He gives me a couple dollars and I went off to get my jug of wine and just blot out that whole uncomfortable experience of him seeing me like that. And unbeknownst to me, him seeing me like that snapped him. It hit him right in the face and he realized that what he was looking at was him if he kept on the same road he was going on. And he went and got a sponsor, not just a sponsor. He got one of those fanatical people we couldn't stand as a sponsor back then. You know what I mean? When you're sitting in AA and you're not doing anything and you have untreated alcoholism, there's a certain type of member of AA that just makes your skin crawl. I mean the ones that always talk about the steps and helping others and they're happy and sober at the same time, which is some kind of abomination. I don't know what that's about. But he got one of those crazy fanatical AA guys as a sponsor, changed his sobriety date, started over, quit pot, and I don' t know any of this. It's happening and a good part of a year later, probably almost a year later, I'm in another institution sitting in the day room waiting for the do-gooders from AA to bring the meeting in there. And here he comes leading the pack. And he's got the lights on and he's laughing and he has guys with him that he is trying to help. I guess he sponsors them. He drove there in his car and it's licensed and insured. He He's got his hair cut short. He's all cleaned up. He looks nice. He's Got a tie on him. A tie, for God's sakes. I mean, oh, they've really got to this guy. But his life is good. And I'm hearing him laughing with these guys and stuff and goofing around with them. You know, I probably could have stayed an alcoholic son and gone in and out of the rooms for years and discounted you. but I couldn't discount him because I could see that something had happened to him and he was like me, and I knew he was like me. He wasn't one of you. He was a guy just like me and I tell you, I thought about him a lot after that. I didn't get sober. That wasn't my moment of getting sober. I want another year on those streets but I always knew. I knew something now. I knew that AA not only worked for those crazy religious do-gooders, but it somehow had worked for a guy like me. And the second thing it says, after we saw that it really worked in others, we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we'd been living it. My God, I was that. I mean, that was it. If you're the person, if you lived anything like I lived where you get to that point where you swear to yourself because you just feel so awful that you'll never go back to that stuff again and you go back to it and you swear again you'll ever go back and you'll go back to it. There is a hopelessness and futility about that and in the process trying everything went to the greatest psychiatrists available, tried medications tried church, tried everything and I keep going back to that awful awful place again And I can't stop it. I believed in the hopelessness and futility of my life way before I ever believed that there was a God. Way before that I even really believed that A would work for me, even though I saw that it worked for him. But boy, I sure knew about that hopelessness and the futile thing of the spree and remorse. And what really makes it futile is that there's a reality that is awful and painful. And the reality is, not only am I burning my life to the ground, but I ain't even getting the fun of the party no more. I can't get back to the good old days. And I'm doing it for nothing. It's like once you cross that line in alcoholism and it stops being doing something really for you and lighting up your spirit and starting to do something to you, it's like you're paying rent on a house that burnt down. that you can't... It's like paying rent in a house you can even go into. It's a bad deal. It says when we believe in those two things, if we'd seen it work in others and we believe the hopelessness and futility of our life as I've been living it, when therefore I'm approached again when those two are in place by those in whom the problem had been solved at this point it says there's nothing left but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools that is laid at my feet. And I finally got to a place where there was nothing left. I don't know what, there's something in me that will do anything, think anything, just imagine anything, try anything because I don' t want to be hopeless because it just terrifies me to accept my own hopelessness. It feels like I'm flushing myself down the toilet like you're gone. And I did everything in me to avoid that. But you get to a place where you can't, you know, all the hope of turning it around or the hope of getting it back on your feet or the hope of finding the right combination of stuff or the hope of maybe find the right relationship or if I was properly financed or whatever you tell yourself, the lies and illusions you tell yourself. And what happens is you go at that long enough, you've gotten into all those places and it still didn't work. And you're still you. And it's still bad. That's not good. Because then you get to a place where there's nothing left because you know there's no hope. I mean, you tried it all. You've done it all, but there's not hope. It says we're in a place where there is nothing left except to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools that had been laid at my feet repeatedly for seven, over seven years and I kept kicking it away because I know what I need. Thank you. Right? I need a better job. I need an example. I need someone who's got a girlfriend that really loves me, not like that other one. You know what that's saying? You tell yourself all that stuff. I need a new psychiatrist. I need better medication. I need on and on and on and I wore all that stuff out and I've been offered this simple kit of spiritual tools for years. I kick it out of the way because I got an opinion and a judgment of what you're offering me. Isn't that weird how I could judge what you're offering me and haven't tried it but I just know stuff about things I've never tried. I fit the old adage, you can always tell an alcoholic and you can't tell him much. I'm that guy. You know, I can go out on a drunk and it could burn my life to the ground and the first thing I get back is my opinion. Right? That's the kind of guy I am. 1978, I couldn't get my opinion back. I couldn'T get my self-reliance back. There was nothing left but to pick up this simple kit of spiritual tools. And you know what it's like? I was thinking about this years ago. I was going into a meeting in a place where there's a lot of homeless people that live around there, and there was a guy there panhandling change. He was in bad shape. He was dirty. He was living in bushes, basically. And I thought, isn't it funny how you have these prejudices? And I had a prejudice against that. I just caught myself thinking stuff about this guy. I don't even know anything about him, thinking, ah, he's a bum or something. You know, that was my first response. And I felt so bad about it, I went back and gave him some money. Because I thought, you know, I caught myself with that kind of deal, right? Thinking, I don'T really know if that guy's a mum. Maybe he's, you KNOW, whatever. And I thought that's like AA. And it's almost like, let's say you're walking down through the part of Portland where all the homeless guys are, and some little old man comes out of the bushes, dirty with three or four overcoats on, you know, and grease-snot slicked back hair or something. You know, really kind of bad shape, shaken. He says, can you give me a quarter? And you give him a quarter. And he says to you, he says, you knows, thank you. Thank you. I really like you. You know what I'm going to do for you? I'm gonna give you $5 million. And he reaches inside his inner coat pocket. and he pulls out a tattered, dirty check that you know he's stolen from some counter off a bank somewhere with an old pencil. He writes you out a check for a million dollars. If you're like me and you think like me, you're going to be nice to the guy maybe if you're not having a bad day, and you're gonna walk away when you're out of sight. You're gonna rip it up, you know, because you know it's bunk. You know that it's can't, it's not real. And the guy doesn't even have a quarter. How's he gonna give you five million dollars? And I've been tearing up that check for seven years, and I never got it. The check's good. The check is good. Right? And I don't get it because I've got opinions of what you're offering me. You're offering the steps in a way of life, in a passageway, a portal, a process that will connect me with the power of great and myself. I'm like with that old bum. So I never cashed the check. 1978, when there's nothing left I took the check and I've been cashing that check ever since it's a check, you cash it it's like that, it's just endless the more you cash the check the bigger the check you find the bigger check the next day it's endless it says we have found much of heaven and been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we have not even dreamed and that's where God is in the fourth dimension Einstein said the fourth dimensional was time there's only one place you'll ever find God and that is right here right now and when you're self centered and self obsessed and have this malady of the spirit you're not present in your own life you're up in your head thinking about your life but you're not really present and you guys have taught me you've given me more presence as a result of these steps in clearing away the stuff that keeps me up my head chattering and not living life thinking about life you've giving me more presence in my life than I ever had not that I still have that inclination to self-centeredness I go up in my head a lot I'm a thinker I'm deep thinker a lot of deep thinkers in AA that's why we the deep thinkers really need sponsors. I sponsor a lot of deep thinkers and I tell them, when you get an idea, call me. If it's a brilliant idea, come and see me. So we're rocketing into the fourth dimension. Back to we agnostics. Some things that... were confusing to me. I misinterpreted a lot of what I saw in Alcoholics Anonymous and what I heard here. Page 45, it says something interesting. It says, lack of power, that was our dilemma. You know what I thought they were saying? Lack of religion. I thought they were saying lack of faith. They're not saying any of that. They're saying lack of power. That was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves obviously. But where and how are we to find that power? Well, that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a powerful power greater than yourself by which you can live. That's the main object of Alcoholics Anonymous is to connect a powerless, stuck, desperate person with the power to live solely. Because I don't have that really. I quit drinking and I hole up in my head until it feels like I'm doing time so much I can't take it. And I start to yearn and thirst and hunger for freedom from this, from up here. there's a letter I got a copy if anybody wants to see it written by Carl Young to Bill Wilson towards the end of Carl's life wrote this letter in response to a letter Bill Wilson wrote Carl Young and he said something amazing in this letter he said that there was something he always believed from his experience about alcoholics but he was hesitant to tell Roland Hazard because he was afraid he'd be misunderstood, but that he always believed that the alcoholic's thirst for alcohol was a low-level thirst of the alcoholic being for unity, connectedness, or as expressed in medieval terms, a union with God. And boy, is that true! I drank because a guy who's locked up in his head, who doesn't fit, who's dying of loneliness, who doesn't even belong on this planet could have five drinks at one time in my life when it really worked and I could come out and play and feel a part of and connected and the loneliness would go away. And I'd feel whole, almost complete. And I thirsted for that. I thirst for it. I think that Alcoholics Anonymous is really a search for that same power in a different way. I understand why some of the, there's monks and religious writers who used to drink a lot. And why sometimes they'd get lit up on booze and that's when they'd feel, they'd really get inspired and connected to God. Do you ever remember that feeling like in the early days of your drinking, you get that right kind of buzz going on. Man, you're connected to the universe. I mean, you can see truth now. I mean you know, you are there. You are there! And I suspect that if you are like me and once you have tasted that, then nothing but that ever does any good again. You live for that. And when that well dries up, and it always does with alcohol, because alcohol is not really what you're looking for. But it's as close as some of us that never found what we're really looking for ever get. And whenthat dries up there's a desolation about alcoholism and a loneliness that's just horrible. The last couple years of my drinking I couldn't get that effect back and it was bad. I drank and I was depressed. I drank and felt sorry for myself when I drank and felt like I was dying of loneliness and even when I was in a relationship I was alone even when I was surrounded by people that I knew cared about me I was alone I was alone and it was painful so that's exactly what this book's about A Search for Power somehow I've got to find a way to turn that juice back on that I once found in drinking. A way to connect. I need the power that alcohol gave me. The power to be part of this planet, to connect, to feel good about my life. I need that. And I can't get it. Therapy didn't give it to me. I'll tell you, if there was a therapist that after half hour session It could make you feel like five shots of tequila. With five shots to kill the word, people would be giving him their bank accounts and anything, just anything, right? It says down a little further down the page, it says, many times we talk to a new man and watch his hope rise as we discuss his alcoholic problem and explain our fellowship, but his face falls when we speak of spiritual matters, especially when we mention God for we have reopened a subject which our man thought he neatly evaded or entirely ignored. And I remember that experience. In June, I get to go up to Maine and I haven't been to Maine since I've been sober but I lived up there for a little while when I was drinking and I had an experience and I'm going to get to come back and I get the chance to go in and talk at a hospital that I was in up there And I was in this hospital up in Waterville as a treatment center for alcoholism. And when I was there, they brought in a group of Alcoholics Anonymous that was composed of trustees from the state prison in Thomason State Penitentiary. And it was the first time � now, you've got to understand, by this time, I'd been exposed to AA and sat in AA meetings for several years now. But they were � I never got anything from the people. They were always them, you know. I'll tell you what it looked like. I'm a street guy, right? People in AA to me look like somebody who maybe got a little too drunk one day and said something unkind to their boss and went to AA for better business connections or something. I mean, you look like those people, right. But I'm in this place, and they bring this prison group in, and they've got two speakers, a short speaker and a long speaker, and the long speaker starts talking, and he's blowing my mind. I mean, he was doing life imprisonment. He killed a cop. He was an outlaw motorcycle guy. He was a big, big tough guy, big arms on him. I mean he's the kind of guy that looked like he was afraid of nothing. And I sat there thinking, man, I'd have drank with this guy because when you're secretly weak and pathetic, I used to gravitate to people like that, you know, because they kind of got your back. You know, if you get a running partner like that you're in good shape. And I'm listening to this guy talking about he's carrying shotguns and doing all this stuff. And then he started getting to me because then he'd talk about coming to the next morning, curled up in a ball feeling like a scared little kid. And I am looking at him thinking, my God, do I feel like that? But you, you feel like this? He was blowing my mind. I don't know what he is in but I am ready to sign up. I mean I am going to sign for this AA. He's all of a sudden, because I'm getting this guy. I like this guy, and then he does something. He starts talking about God. The minute he did that, I sat there and thought to myself, oh, what have they done to him? Oh, no. No, not God. Oh, not him. Oh, jeez. Oh, man. Man, I couldn't believe it. because I had a lot of prejudices about God. I didn't even know... You know, the funny thing about prejudices is you don't know they're prejudices. It's just stuff you think is so. And on the next page, it talks about two things that have to... I think this capsulizes all of my experience with step two in a short little paragraph in the middle of page 46. It said if you can do two things, And it doesn't even say you have to know there's God or believe in God. It says, let us make haste to reassure you that we found as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice, and I had a lot of prejudices. And the guys I sponsor, that's one of the first things we do after we look to see if they got alcoholism. What are your prejudices? What are the ones you don't know? But what are the old ideas about God that make it hard in the dead of night when you're ashamed of yourself because you just screwed up to turn to that power? What are the things in you, the ideas, the judgments? Because that's what prejudice is. It's your old ideas. It's you preconceived notions. What are those prejudices? What are your preconceive notions? What are they? What are you prejudicing? What are these prejudices in you that make them so there are times when you can't turn to God? what are those prejudices and it doesn't say you have to get rid of them it says just lay them aside all your conception and I think what it's asking me to do is exactly what had happened to me in 1978 coming to this thing from a place of demoralization where I get it that I don't know anything I don' t know nothing I don''t know I need help almost like a child who knows nothing it says if I can do that and do one other thing and it says express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than myself I can doing those two things the book says I'll commence to get results even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power which is God impossible and that's exactly how I entered into this relationship started to enter into this relationship with this power greater then myself I came to the table as a skeptic and a person who didn't believe. I didn't belief in God, but I believed in my own futility and hopelessness. I believed I was stuck. I believed that I was dying. I believed i was in a trap I could not spring and I could not fix myself and I tried absolutely everything. Everything that there was to try. And I was stung. And so the members of Alcoholics Anonymous when I was new They told me to do some things that I had to have been beaten down to do them. They took advantage of my weakness. Things like they said, I want you to get down, physically get down on your knees every single morning and every single night and ask for help from whatever's running the universe to stay sober that day and then get down On Your Knees and thank whatever that was and know that that wasn't you that got you stayed, kept you sober. and I started doing it. I didn't like it. I was living in a halfway house. I'd go in the bathroom, lock the door, push the throw rug underneath the crack in the door so nobody can see me pray and kiss Jesus. I don't know. Isn't that crazy? But this, I remember doing that. Push that thing. I was so paranoid. Here's my fear. Like a bunch of people in AA are going to bust in and say, ah, we got one. I don' t know. I'm a knucklehead. I'm afraid that I'm going to feel stupid. So I started doing it. And I'd get down on my knees at night and I'd think whatever that was and from the moment of the approach from the, I'm telling you from the day I started doing that, and I don't believe in God things started happening in my life and I resisted it I went back to this guy argued with him, I said because I was in a meeting and I'm hearing about people talking about praying. Some guys pray when they're driving their car. Other guys pray sitting in the john. I said, how come I got to get, these guys pray all these other ways. Some guy's praying laying in bed. How come I've got to get down on my knees? He says, not everybody does. Just guys with egos like yours. What I realized that I wasn't praying because God needed me to pray. I was on my knee. I prayed on my knees because I needed to be on my means. God didn't care. But boy, was it important to me to create a demonstration of a willingness and that's exactly what it says here. It says if we're express even a willingness. And what's a better expression or a demonstration from a guy who doesn't believe than a physical demonstration? For me to physically get down on my knees I can't think of a better demonstration. And the miracles started happening. I'm talking about the subtle things, you know, like where I'm at the very end of my rope and I'm afraid I'm going to be out on the streets and a job just comes right out of nowhere for me. Not the one I wanted. I mean, God had that. That it was the good job that was just right for me, just right f�r mich. Put a roof over my head, not a lot of money, just enough money because he'd given me too much money back in those days I had to go to some saloon and tell everybody how smart I was. It was just enough money to keep cigarettes in my pocket so I could put a dollar in a basket, feel like I'm a part of AA, and get me to just pay my basic rent at the halfway house. It was Just Right. And I just started getting taken care of. I can't tell you how many dozens of times in my early sobriety I would be jammed up. And I don't have the presence of mind to know what's wrong. And I just, God, I just feel awful. Please help me. And I'd go to some meeting and there would be somebody there I don't even know talking exactly about how I feel and what's going on with me. And not only is he pinning it in a way that I can get it, but he's also telling me what he did. And all of a sudden I realize, oh my God, I've got to go back and clear this air with my boss. And I didn't have the presence of mind to feel. I didn' t know how to do a tenth step. And God started working through the people in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I started to come to believe the only way a guy like me really can. I'm not capable of believing in something because you tell me. I mean, I'd like, I tell you, if I could be that way, my life would have been a lot easier. I'd have listened to my dad growing up. But I am not that way. But what had to happen is God went out of his way to come into my life. And I started to believe just by the reality of what was happening. I was over in London the summer before last, and I was amazed to see that the streets of London, there are certain parts that still have the gas streetlights. And years ago, before they had the electric starters, the streets of London at night were lit by these gas lamps and they didn't have electric starts so they had a guy whose job was to go up and down the streets of London with a long pole with a flame on the end to even light those deals and you could climb up to the top of the highest building in London and look out over the city at twilight and you couldn't see where this lamplighter guy was but you could always see where he'd been and I could sit in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous I was a two-and-a-half-year sober, crazy, whole of myself. And I don't know where God is. He's not present in my life because I haven't worked the rest of the steps yet. I didn't do that until I was over four years sober. But even in the state of untreated alcoholism that I was trying to outrun by going to 15 meetings a week, God, I took the basic introductory actions and brought that power into my life. And I could sit in those meetings and I could see where God had been in my life. And I Could See A Lot Of Where He'd Been In The Lives Of Other Guys I Seen Coming In Out Of AA And All Of A Sudden They Turned The Corner And Guys Getting Their Kids Back And Getting The Light On In Their Eyes, Hopeless Guys, Their Life's Turned Around. And, I mean, you'd have to be an idiot to sit in rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. You'd have? be asleep. But to sit here and be awake and watch what happens here. My God, there's something here. I mean we are the paragons of bad luck. And all of a sudden, what? I mean what's it? Do you mean like all of the sudden we get lucky? I mean, we didn't get brighter. I mean I don't know about you. If anything, I hope I've gotten dumber. But I've connected with something here. On page 55 of the book, it talks about how I'm going to make that connection and I didn't make it for a while because I hadn't worked the steps. But it says deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God and it goes on to say that it's obscured, it's blocked off by some things that I will uncover in step four when I follow the process of this book. Steps four actually through seven. And then if I do that, I will find the great reality deep down within me. And I found that power in my life. Sometimes it's very, very present and it's a consciousness and sometimes I just say the words and the prayers. And it kind of comes and goes, sort of like the tides. Some days in AA, you're so connected you want to get a tent and a tambourine. And other days you just call your sponsor and go to another meeting. And that's just the way it seems to be. And one of the things I realized is that it's It's spiritually childish of me to expect to be plugged in, tuned up, turned on 24-7 that there are movements of my soul and self. The real thing that blocks me from God, that blocks the channel in this flow of power, self never goes away. And it's the battle and it's the big tug of war and sobriety in my spirit between self and God. And for the rest of my days, I will have Step 10, 11, and 12 on a good sponsor in my life because that natural propensity and inclination to play God, to judge everybody, to be in control, to do all that crap has never left me. And yet, most days, if you were to follow me around and watch my life, most days I live a life that looks like I'm fairly surrendered. At least I'm in the zip code. You know what I mean? At leastI stay in the ZIP Code because if you get out of the Zip Code, then you're going down a bad road. I stay inthe ZIP code of carrying out that decision in Step 3. Thank you. Thanks for watching!